Wednesday, May 31, 2017

More CEOs Are Getting Fired After an Ethical Lapse, Study Finds

Ethical breaches are causing more chief executives to lose their jobs. The upside? Researchers say the rising numbers don’t point to more corporate misbehavior: It’s that CEOs are being held to a higher level of accountability.

Among the myriad reasons corporate bosses leave their jobs, firings have been on the decline. In a study of CEO exits at the world’s 2,500 largest public companies, researchers at PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP’s strategy consulting arm, called Strategy&, found 20% of CEO exits in the past five years were forced, down from 31% of CEO exits in the previous five years.

But CEO ousters due to ethical lapses—either their own improper conduct, or their employees’—are climbing. Such forced exits rose to 5.3% of CEO departures in the 2012-to-2016 period, up from 3.9% during the previous five years.